KAUKAUNA - More than $2,700 in cash missing from a property tax payment has put aldermanic candidate and current City Clerk/Treasurer Susan Duda under scrutiny as the April 3 election nears, but an Outagamie County Sheriff's Department investigation has found no criminal wrongdoing.

A Kaukauna homeowner paid $2,772 in cash to the city's clerk/treasurer office in late December, well ahead of the Jan. 31 deadline, documents show. But that resident received a notice of delinquency from the Outagamie County Treasurer's Office, bringing to light that the cash wasn't accounted for in Kaukauna — and prompting Duda to write a check from her personal account to the county for the missing sum, Common Council President Lee Meyerhofer told USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin.

Duda told USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin she is trying to figure out what happened to the cash, which was not recorded in her office as having been paid. She said she was not the person who handled the transaction.

"I didn't want it to accumulate more interest ... so I thought, well, I'll pay this and then I can try to figure out what happened, give me time to figure it out," she said of the check she wrote to the county.

"If the person paid (their taxes) Dec. 29 of 2017, which she's saying they did, they're not subject to any fines, they're waived of all those automatically because they did pay their taxes on time," he said. "So that excuse that she gives — if anyone should know it, she knows that's not a true statement."

Duda, who is challenging Meyerhofer for his District 3 seat on April 3, said she didn't want the city to owe any money and that she's an honest person.

She didn't report the money missing to anyone within the city, Meyerhofer and City Attorney Kevin Davidson said.

Davidson said that the sheriff's department investigation points to an apparent mistake involving the misplacement of the cash and the use of personal funds to cover the error.

"All I can say is, 'cleared of wrongdoing' is a good thing, certainly," Davidson said. "I don't know that anyone wants to see any office undergo criminal charges and whatnot. That said, the practices and how it was handled overall does point to some additional questions for us. Is that the appropriate way to handle a discrepancy in something with public funds?"

The issue was addressed in open session at the March 20 Common Council meeting, when aldermen arrived to find documents related to the issue on their desks.

Davidson told USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin in an email that his office was notified by the director of finance on March 15 that the county treasurer had received a personal check from Duda to pay a resident's tax bill that had been reported unpaid and delinquent. The next day, his office contacted the Wisconsin Department of Justice to ask what to do with the information.

DOJ directed the city to refer the issue to the sheriff's department, which conducted an investigation that determined there was no criminal wrongdoing, Davidson said.

The Kaukauna Police Department did not investigate the incident because it works closely with other city departments and wanted an agency without those ties to the city to look into the matter.

The sheriff's department has finished its investigation but declined to detail its findings because its reports have not been finalized.